A Little Fall of Rain
by jfqzx
Summary: Sakuno finally decides to take a bold step towards what she wants, but things don't exactly go as planned... Oshitari, Sakuno


**A Little Fall of Rain, chapter 1**

Anime Series: Prince of Tennis

Rating: PG-13

Theme: 1# Cold hands; cold feet

Pairing: Yuushi/Sakuno

Disclaimer: The realm of PoT belongs to Konomi duh. The summary & title belong to Cameron Mackintosh, producer of the Les Miserables musical, using the song of same title.

Summary: _" This rain will wash away what's past. You will keep me safe, and you will keep me close. And the rain will make the flowers grow."_

000 000 000

Snip-snip 

Silken curls of autumn brown fell to the floor. Hands worked the slim pair of scissors at a speed almost too fast for the eye to catch. After awhile, the hairdresser stared at the finished product and dusted any remnants of hair from her client's face.

" Voila I'm done!" he exclaimed proudly at his latest masterpiece.

Yet, the customer gave no response. The hairdresser placed a reassuring hand on the stiff shoulder of the one sitting before him, the corners of his mouth twitched into a grin.

" You can look now my dear."

Hesitantly, one chocolate orb revealed itself, followed by the other, as the girl looked at herself in the mirror.

The hairstylist found himself holding his breadth in anticipation.

A crooked grin found it's way onto her mouth. "I like it."

000 000 000

Sakuno Ryuuzaki skipped on the pavement on the way to school, grinning uncontrollably. She felt oddly liberated. After months of great indecision, she had finally cut her hair. Not it only hung just an inch or two past her shoulders and she just needed to keep it in a simple ponytail.

While a haircut would not seem like much to the onlooker, the action really was the start of a big turning point for the senior high freshman. For the real motivation behind getting rid of years of nicely grown hair was a certain ponta drinking tennis prodigy.

Yes, as it would seem, this was the day that Sakuno Ryuuzaki was tired of waiting for her prince in shinning armour, or rather in this case, white and blue jersey. Today, she was going to do something she would never have dreamt of doing before, which was to ask Echizen Ryoma on a date.

She had developed an attraction towards her schoolmate since they had first met in junior high. However, her shy personality and the fact that Ryoma always had people around him, whether he liked it or not, had only added to her bad case of cold feet. Tomoka had often admonished her for never taking the initiative. It was only now, after such a long time of waiting and having tolerated being practically ignored that Sakuno decided to take the matter into her own hands. If he did not come to her, then she would make her presence felt. After all; living in his own tennis centric world, Ryoma was the kind to need something to be spelt out in front of him wasn't he?

000 000 000

Sakuno waited for Echizen at school gate, hiding in a spot so no one could see her. She wanted Ryoma to be the first to see her new hairstyle, although she did admit that she would not mind it Tomo could be there to give her an opinion first, but her friend had to go home to baby-sit her brothers as usual. Plus even Tomo did not know of her plan. Sakuno had purposely timed it so she would return when tennis practice had ended.

She watched as the other regulars exited the school, careful to stay out of sight. Momoshiro and Eiji were happily bantering as usual, no doubt up to mischief; Fuji smiled as he walked alongside them, occasionally adding a comment here and there. Oishi tagged along the back with Tezuka and Inui, who was as usual buried in his green notebook of data.

Where was Ryoma?

After awhile, Sakuno grew frustrated. _Perhaps for some reason he didn't come to practice today and here I am, standing here like a fool. More of a fool if he came out earlier and I missed him. _

Her head hung sadly, and she was all prepared to leave as well when said prodigy showed at the gate. Her heart started pounding and she felt her legs root to the spot like dead weights as the all too familiar sensations of cold feet took over once again.

Damnit Ryuuzaki, you're made of stronger stuff than this. And you really going to miss such a fine opportunity?

Steeling herself, she took a step forward and opened her mouth.

"Ryoma!"

There! She did it. Wait a minute, that wasn't her voice. Someone had beaten her to it, someone with an awfully familiar voice.

A blurry figure ran to Ryoma's side and stood next to him, out of breath and annoyed.

Tomo! What's she doing here? Why isn't she at home?

" Ryoma you baka, stop walking so fast." Tomo chided an unmoving Ryoma who as usual, just watched on without a hint of care on his face.

However, Tomo simply carried on" Can't you see I'm carrying heavy library books here? You know if you were a proper boyfriend you would do something called help."

Yes Ryoma, a good deed sometimes wouldn't kill you… wait a minute… b…boyfriend?

Echizen was smirking now, "Mada mada dane." He took a step towards the fired up girl.

And in the next moment, Sakuno's world shattered as the cap-wearing freshman kissed her best friend.

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Time seemed to slow for Tomoka as in one of those rare moments; Ryoma Echizen let his guard down and kissed her gently on the lips.

They had been seeing each other since near the end of their last year in junior high and their relationship had been kept pretty much under wraps. At first she had felt really guilty concealing this from her good friend, Sakuno, whom she knew had had a crush on the tennis regular for as long as she could remember but circumstance had somehow brought Tomo and Ryoma together (ironically enough while attempting to match-make the two) and nothing could really change anything once things had started to happen. Sakuno, though slightly like nervous as she was, would never actually go up to Ryoma and confess.

But for now, she would enjoy these times…

" Tomo…"

The soft exclamation nearly made Tomoka jump a mile high in the air. "Sakuno!" Oh crap, she wasn't supposed to find out like this. What was she doing here? And what did on earth did she do to her hair?

" Tomo… how… when…"

Sighing reluctantly as she knew she'd have to face it someday, Tomoka hung her head. " Since the end of last year, believe me Sakuno, I wanted to tell you but I was scared of how hurting you, knowing you liked..."

She started towards her friend, forcing a reassuring smile on her face.

Sakuno, who looked as if she was about to cry any moment, simply stared back, and subconsciously took a step backward to every advance.

" I can explain it Sakuno, just hear me out alright?" She reached out a hand to comfort her.

The girl before her recoiled before blurting out in obvious horror. " Tomo… I… I trusted you!"

And before anything else could be said, Sakuno turned and ran.

Tomoka could only watch her friend's retreating figure and mutter, "oh crap."

000 000 000

Sakuno ran blindly, the roads were blurred as tears stung her eyes, tears that threatened to fall if she were to stop and turn back. She would not succumb to this and cry. Tears would mean she had given up, that she had lost.

She ran till she was parched and breathless and had no choice but to stop. She collapsed onto a nearby bench in a boneless heap, panting heavily, emotions a whir in her. She did not know exactly how to act or what to feel.

This was one of the times where she needed some sense knocked into her by someone who was usually in check with herself, someone who kept a sense of level headedness no matter what happened. Someone like…

"Tomo…" she hiccupped, her throat screaming for water. IwillnotcryIwillnotcry.

She looked at the surroundings around her in vain attempt to distract her from her thoughts, and that image of her best friend kissing the boy she liked. However, it only served to make her feel worse as she realized that nothing around her vincity looked familiar. She was hopelessly lost.

IwillnotcryIwillnotcry. Damn, if only Tomo were here she'd know what to do… oh Tomo, how could you do this to me. You knew I like him.

A cool gust of wind blew, and she drew her feet onto the bench, hugging her knees tightly, and buried her face in her arms. The cool air and silence around her were lulling.

I'm so tired. I just want to get away from all this for a moment.

000 000 000

" Man, practice sure was strange today. Did you see Atobe? He seemed kind of distracted. What's up with him?"

No reply.

" Oi, Yuushi, are you listening to me? Do you know what's wrong with Atobe today?"

Oshitari Yuushi tried not to groan as his doubles partner barraged an onslaught of questions upon him. While he treasured their partnership dearly, sometimes the red haired boy just did not know when to quit.

Controlling the urge to do something not very nice to silence the latter, Oshitari casually remarked, " And just what gives you the impression that I do? What did I say about assuming the last time… "

Gakuto realized he had run off again and scrambled to find a reason. "Well, I dunno…I guess it's 'cuz you're the closest to him? I thought you guys tell each other everything."

" Hm…" The dark haired tensai became speculative. "While that is usually the case, it is unfortunately not so this time."

" You mean you really don't know why he's acting so weird?"

" That would be correct."

They continued walking in silence, Oshitari's thoughts drifting to a certain captain of theirs as Gakuto's questioning had simply made him even more worried for Atobe's odd behaviour. Though it was true that he and Atobe were the closest to each other within the team, sometimes Oshitari just could not figure out his best friend's mindset. On the surface Atobe might seem arrogant, demanding and materialistic. On another hand, he was an excellent captain, hard as some of his methods may appear. And then there was the side only a handful of people; including Oshitari himself had privilege of bearing witness to. No one would think the so dubbed 'diva' was capable of being more of a friend than one could ask for.

The dark haired tensai smirked inwardly. You had to really hand it to Atobe for being able to pull out any one of his three personalities so successfully that no one would ever dream of the real person he was underneath.

Which was why he was now rather concerned for his friend. During practice that day, the tennis captain had nearly shed his well-played skin. Atobe had been so off (at least to people who knew him well even like the regulars) that he only watched supervised the practices half-heartedly, even forgetting to doll out a set of laps as standard punishment when a club member had arrived late. He had not even reprimanded Hiyoshi and Gakuto for arguing with each other again.

What was it that could get Hyoutei's class president so confused?

It was then that an exclamation made by Gakuto as they cut through a park, caused Oshitari to break from his musings.

" Hey, Yuushi. There's someone sleeping on that bench!"

000 000 000

Sakuno stirred, wincing slightly at the pain on her back. Note to self: never ever sleep on a piece of wood again.

" So… she wakes."

She almost started in fright at the lazy drawl. Turning, she found herself facing a boy probably a couple of years older than her, clad in a school uniform that had checkered pants. He sat with his back slanted halfway towards her, an arm casually resting on the back of the bench. All she could make out of him was that he wore glasses and had raven hair cut in layers that fell just to his shoulders.

And of course there was that accent of his. " You know… it's not healthy to sleep in public like this. It's cold, not to mention, unsafe."

It sounded vaguely familiar but her mind just could not place it. It was thick, low and he pronounced his syllables in a slightly different way. Kansai was it?

Then it dawned on her that this stranger had been watching her as she slept and she became nervous. Her throat was still parched and her voice was hoarse as she attempted to speak without croaking embarrassingly.

" Ano… and would you be safe?"

She could swear she could feel him smirk in his response " Tsk tsk, that's how you thank someone who has been guarding you. What harm could I possibly do, I'm still in school uniform after all. To take advantage of you in such a place would be signing my expulsion."

Sakuno's sleep filled mind slowly worked as it processed that substantial quantity of words in that thick accent. Eto… did he say he was watching me?

" Ehm… thanks for watching me then." She apologized meekly, and then made to stand up. "I guess I should be on my way."

" If you insist. In that case, can I have my jacket back?"

" What… oh" She suddenly realized she had a jacket draped over her shoulders. She took it off and saw it was a sports jacket. It was white with grayish sleeves. Now where had she seen that before? She thought hard and her eyes widened in realization.

" You… you're from Hyoutei?"

The boy turned in his seat. And for the first time she saw his face, and two and two all suddenly added up.

Dark eyes glinted at her as he smirked " Oshitari Yuushi at your service."

000 000 000

Author's note: Well I hope you liked it and that I wasn't too OOC. It's been awhile since I've written a fic. That's the first challenge and I plan to do a short series with some of the themes.

The part about Atobe will be explained when I get down to posting in the 30hugs lj community. It'll be explained as it goes along so don't worry.


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